How does single-payer work?

Individuals and businesses pay into a fund that combines with Medicare and other public funds now spent on health care to provide everyone with full medical, dental, preventative care, prescription drugs, vision, mental health, chiropractic and other health care.

As with Medicare everyone gets a health care card. For individuals and businesses that now have, or provide health insurance, coverage should be much greater and cost less in most instances than they now pay for commercial health insurance.

Why does it make sense?

It eliminates the broken fractionalized system we have by covering everyone of every age, income level, employed or unemployed, without regard to pre-existing health conditions. It permits all physicians, 59% of who favor a single-payer system, to practice medicine free of constraints and paperwork imposed by thousands of different for profit insurance plans the Health Insurance Industry use to milk America’s health care cash cow.

What’s wrong with the system we have?

We don’t have a system! We have dozens of systems relating to income, age, employment status, and health conditions that relate to for profit Health Insurance. We drain critical funds from “health care” by diverting them to Health Insurance Company commissions, high executive salaries, profits, bonuses and stock options, none of which provides health care. Profitable insurance companies like to, “Insure the Best Forget the Rest!”, but insurance profits are not a human right and a drag on all other American Businesses! The U.S. spends 15.9% of its GDP for health, including insurance and non competitive drug costs, placing the U.S. 37th in world for health of its population. We have the finest physicians and providers. Our people need access!

All other western industrialized democracies consider health care an important human right directly affecting health and well being of their populations and economies. They spend 30% to 50% less of their GDP on health cost than does the U.S., leaving U.S. business at a severe disadvantage and U.S. population dead last among those countries for health and longevity

Who is affected by our broken system?

You are! If you’re insured, you’re probably paying much more for a high deductible, low cap policy that doesn’t cover dental, vision, prescription drugs or other things you would be covered for with a single-payer policy covering your total health needs and lower negotiated drug costs.

You can quickly lose your insurance, or greatly increase its cost with a change in personal circumstances. 46,000,000 Americans including 7,000,000 Californians are uninsured and catastrophic medical cost bankruptcy is the #1 cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. but 70% of those bankrupted had medical insurance, and were denied benefits due to “discovery” of pre-existing conditions or “capped out” on their policy. The U.S. medical bankruptcy problem doesn’t even exist in other western industrialized democracies.

Insured? Lose your job, change of health, or both? Still insured? At what cost?

Can we afford Medicare for all, a single-payer system?

We can’t afford not to! Our international competitors run the health care race without insurance handicaps like ours on their back. If California’s single-payer plan SB 840, as endorsed by LWV, and passed by the CA Assembly and Senate had not been vetoed in 2006 by the Governor, it’s estimated CA would have saved $17 billion by 2008.

It passed again in 2008 and was vetoed again by the Governor!

U.S. HR 676 for single-payer health care, Conyers, Mich., U.S. House of Representatives, is now joined by Sen. Bernie Sanders, VT, Single-Payer Health Reform Bill in the U.S. Senate. It covers all 46,000,000 uninsured Americans and saves an estimated $400 billion annually by eliminating insurance profit and burdensome paperwork imposed on physicians, hospitals and providers by thousands of different insurance plans. It also funds community health centers for 60 million Americans living in rural and underserved areas and establishes a National Health Service Corps to train an additional 24,000 health professionals. Large savings are made by negotiating,

as other democracies do, for competitive drug prices.

How can we get an efficient single-payer health care system?

U.S. health insurance companies and drug companies use profits provided by you to lobby our legislators and make liberal “financial campaign contributions”. Financial contributions wouldn’t influence our legislators of course, but legislators need to hear from the 2/3 of the American Voters now in favor of a single-payer system, as they now hear from Physicians for a National Health Program, (www.phnp.org), Nurses Unions and other health care providers in favor of single-payer health care. Health Insurance and Drug Companies can make contributions, but they can’t VOTE! Let legislators know we do voteand what we expect them to accomplish.

What’s the status of single-payer health care in the U.S. and CA legislatures and how can I help change our health care system?

In CA single-payer SB 840 has been reintroduced by Sen. Mark Leno as SB 810 with major backing in the CA Senate and Assembly. Write your state legislators to support it, and of course the Governor, to sign it this time when it passes. Also write your congressional representatives and the President to support Congressman John Conyers, HR 676 and Senator Bernie Sanders U.S. Senate bill, S 703 for single-payer health care, and not acceptmore insurance,”donations”!